George Taylor, Giovanni Costigan, Tom Pressly, Richard Johnson, Jon Bridgman

In 1962 (after two years at Stanford), I spent my junior year at the UW. I arrived as a political science major but had the extreme good fortune (vision?) to sign up for history courses with George Taylor, Giovanni Costigan and Tom Pressly. Ah, the elegance of George Taylor, his steel hand in a velvet glove manner of making us "dig" for our best. And Giovanni, Giovanni -- for me, a Goldwater guy, the vast difference in our political world view -- but, man, could he make history soar and sing, the poetry and drama of his lectures, the gentle but insistent demand for scholarly rigor and excellence. And has anyone anywhere ever made our Civil War come to life the way Tom Pressly did? No way.

Well, I went back to Palo Alto and got my history B.A. and took a two-decade hiatus before entering the UW master's program (in history) in 1988. And, to my delight, my first class was with Professor Richard Johnson (another superb teacher) .... and ... Tom Pressly!

But, as Sinatra sang, "The Best (Was) Yet to Come." Having studied with the aforementioned Husky "legends" (and Wallace Stegner and Alexander Karensky at Stanford), I thought it couldn't get any better. But it did. In my dotage I encountered the one and only... Jon Bridgman, and he became my all-time favorite in his very first World War I lecture. I took several classes with Jon, and he became my friend and mentor.

I only hope my son, Nicholas, who just completed his freshman year as a Husky, gets to study with Jon. Then the circle, indeed will be elegantly squared.

Doug Glant, '91
Seattle

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